Rubénerd!

In 2011 I discussed how I was giving Google the benefit of the doubt regarding their harvesting of open WiFi data, and that it was consumer network hardware manufacturers that should be working to protect consumers. I was... at least partly wrong!

Uh-oh

From my Google's non-existent whitelists... exist post I wrote on the 11th of March 2011:

Take the street view controversy. While I think Google engineers were short sighted by not closely studying the source code of the software they put on their trucks and drove around the world, I don't believe they did it maliciously.

Unfortunately, we now know that isn't true. From Stilgherrian:

So, you know when Google’s Street View cars, the ones taking photos down every street, were also accidentally scooping up people’s unencrypted Wi-Fi traffic? Turns out the engineer who wrote the software did it deliberately, and his boss knew he did.

The European Union isn't impressed, and may reopen their case against Google. To quote John Gruber:

Uh-oh.

But the networks were open!

Back when this controversy started and people were blaming Google for stealing people's data, I read an equal number of posts from other bloggers blaming people for having open wireless networks in the first place. I acknowledged this:

These signals were being broadcast in the open, and while the scale of Google's downloading may warrant further scrutiny, it skips the real issue that people are still broadcasting unencrypted data out of their homes for anyone to gain access to.

Still, I didn't go as far as to blame consumers.

Rather than blaming consumers (which is always an easy thing to do) however, I place the blame on network hardware manufacturers for selling devices that didn't make this clearer.

Unfortunately, we now know in hardware manufacturers attempted to make security easier for consumers by implementing WPA2 standards, and in the process introduced a security vulnerability so severe it bypasses the otherwise strong encryption used by them. All of course except Apple, and I remember people chewing me out for having a Airport Extreme base station... heh ;D.

Regardless, there are a lot of issues at play here, not least the ethics of some Google engineers. Any company can/does have rogue players, but the key is transparency. Only disclosing this now rubs me the wrong way, a little.

One of the current memes surrounding Google Drive seems to be how their logo was copied from Vplayer. As a logo nerd, I felt it my duty to clear the air!

TechInAsia's post

From TechInAsia, where the above mockup is from:

The Drive icon is essentially the Vplayer one with a bit of dimensional shading added, spun 90-degrees anti-clockwise, and then looked at from the other side. [..]

What do you think of the Drive logo? Perhaps Google got its inspiration elsewhere – maybe from the funky new tech blog The Verge. Let us know in the comments.

I would let you know in the comments section of your site, but it needs JavaScript. Oh well!

You install it on your Möb-ilephone

While copying isn't unexpected behaviour from Google necessarily, I find TechInAsia's claim that their new logo was a copy of Vplayer to be a bit of a stretch. As far as I can tell, both services are employing Möbius Strip-like designs in their logos.

In fact, if we really wanted to discuss which companies are copying off whom, it took me a minute of image searching to come up with these:

The latter should be of most concern to Android and Google users, for it's an application for iPhones! It's name also gives away the design device in question.

Recycled

Still, perhaps the best known example of a Möbius Strip in use is the recycling icon. Perhaps it's making a comment that all these icons for all these services are merely reusing this same idea ;).

Here's my terrible mockup of the recycling icon, in the Google Drive colours.

Conclusion

So I suppose the case could be made that the Google Drive logo bears a resemblence to Vplayer, but to be fair to Google, they're icon is a derivative of many, many others which were all based on a single wondrous twist of a belt.

There are many legitimate technical and privacy concerns surrounding Google Drive. This isn't one of them.

I'm commenting on this news story exactly one year after my post about Dropbox. Freaky!

The story

So Google will be taking on Dropbox with their own cloud storage service, titled Google Drive. I thought Google Drive was when they drive around capturing home WiFi locations and data. Heh.

Whereas Dropbox comes with 2GB of storage, Google Drive will come with 5. Not sure whether that's 5GB or 5GiB (Mac OS X and Fedora 16 with Gnome 3 have made me even more acutely aware of these differences), but we'll wait and see.

Please no more client software!

From what I'm reading on the intertubes, some are comparing this move to Google releasing Gmail, with similar predictions of success. It's a cute idea, but Gmail offered an order of magnitude more capacity than competing email services at the time; 5GB is hardly a similar leap. 5TB, now there would be something!

Mostly though, I've resisted using the likes of Dropbox because I can't stand installing extra software, and wasn't going to go through the rigamarole of installing a Linux binary compatibility layer and test it to run on FreeBSD. If Google Drive allowed remote access through established protocols, FUSE mounts and the like, I'd be on it faster than you could say "data mine".

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Of course, as with all cloud storage services you'd want to observe some precautions. As I said about Dropbox on this day last year:

I don't understand the increasingly negative attitudes people are having towards services like Dropbox. People who don't encrypt their personal files before sending them off to a public, shared server clearly want their data to be read in the clear, so who cares?

Encrypting data before uploading would be an absolute must, any other use would obviously be reckless unless it was media you'd publish in public. Even then, you'd have to weigh up the utility you'd derive with Google knowing even more about your interests, and the legal ramifications of having your stuff hosted under United States jurisdiction, assuming that's where it ends up. Eh, just encrypt everything, play it safe!

I'll be following this story. If it turns out Google Drive is another of the company's now infamous me too! products that also requires client software just like Dropbox, nothing to see here, move on. If it doesn't require extra middleman software, is simple and has a web UI that's usable (unlike what they did to Google Reader, Gmail and the like), they might have a hit.

Was intrigued by this graphic from the Windows Live login screen. Arguably all three phones are displaying the same information for each message, and (barring the names) even the text is a similar size. Yet iOS and Android manage six to seven full previews, and WP only does four.

I'm not arguing message counts and more efficient layouts automatically correlate with increased productivity or usability, but it'd certainly cut down on time spent scrolling!

To quote my dear friend Sebastian, you're not firing me Google, I quit!

The backstory

So I was sent a link to Google+ this afternoon, which necessitated me blowing the cobwebs off my Google credentials and logging in for the first time in months.

Turns out Google suspended my Google+ account, on the following basis:

Your profile has been suspended.

After reviewing your profile, we have determined that the name provided violates the Google+ Names Policy.

While suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.

If you have changed your name in accordance with our policies, please submit an appeal and we will review your profile again.

If you believe that your profile has been suspended in error, please submit your profile for reconsideration.

Your profile will be reviewed again and re-enabled if it complies with the Google+ Names Policy. Reviews are usually completed within a few days.

We're sorry for the inconvenience.

We understand that Google+ and its Names Policy may not be for everyone at this time. We'd be sad to see you go, but if you do choose to leave, make a copy of your Google+ data first. Then, click here to disable Google+.

Come again?

I had my name set as Ruben Schade, esq. While a little tongue in cheek, the name itself could be verified from any number of links I had to my own domains and profiles on other websites. The "esq" portion is a honourific which can be legally used by any individual in Australia and Singapore. For all intents and purposes, this is my name.

In any event, I have neither the time nor inclination to fight with Google bureaucracy. I've deleted my Google+ profile, and the Rubenerd.com page. If this is how they're going to treat their users, I don't want anything to do with their (albeit failing) site.

So, I deleted it!

From the deletion page:

You've successfully deleted Google+ and associated social content

We're sorry to see you leave! Please help us improve by telling us why you are leaving and what we can do better. This survey is optional but your feedback is much appreciated.

Under "Please tell us why you're leaving", I left this:

The lack of time and inclination to fight Google bureaucracy, your heavy-handed and knee-jerk suspension of accounts with legitimate names including mine, ever increasing concerns over the privacy of my data with Google, my replacement of this and other Google services with better alternatives, lack of use of Google+, and finally in preparation to delete my Google profile entirely.

With my move away from Gmail, Google Code, Google Reader and their other services, this means I'll no longer be logging into Google at all anymore. Once I'm sure everyone knows my new hosted email address, I'll be deleting my Google account that I started in 2003.

As for Google+, I suppose my deletion won't count for much given I barely used it anyway. To answer myself from July 2011, not me.

John Gruber on the lack of Flash in Chrome for Android:

Remember when Android’s (and the BlackBerry Playbook’s, and WebOS’s) support for Flash was supposed to be a competitive advantage against iOS?

I was called out by multiple people when I defended Apple's move to not include Flash, and made the case that mobile Flash made no sense. I'm sure it was the same for John; after all, we're just fanboys!

Still, while it's tempting to engage in a little schadenfreude, the pertitent detail is Adobe ceased support for the mobile version of Flash, it wasn't Google's decision. They don't deserve ire, or praise, as a result.

I've touched on the whole New Google thing a few times, but only in reference to other people's comments. Here are some of my own. Get it? TRACKING!? :D

Inevitability

In the same way Microsoft and Lotus standardised the disparate applications that made up their office suites, on the surface Google is attempting to simplify things for their users and engineers by making things look and work similar. Leaving aside questions of effectiveness, one need only look at the user interface changes in Gmail, Google Reader, Analytics and Google+ to see this new line of thinking in action.

In that vein, a unified Terms of Service for all their products makes nothing but sense. Instead of a different one for each service, their users can now ignore and click accept under just one.

Still, while everyone seems worried with the tracking (more on that below), I'm more concerned that a unified Terms of Service will lead to the same lowest common denominator problem that is plaguing their new UIs. Some services naturally need more and different information than others, but a blanket TOS would (logically, perhaps?) need to include all of these. The result is services that don't need certain personal information to operate now have legal access (well, as legal as a TOS can be, as I sort of wrote about way back in 2006).

It didn't entirely wash with me, and it seems even US lawmakers are having a hard time believing it too.

Tracking

The tech world is all a dither about the potential tracking problems this new TOS introduces. For one thing, all their services will now be sharing data with each other, and worse still you won't be able to opt-out of this sharing. The end of the world... right?

Firstly, anyone who banked on having their YouTube history insulated from their Google profiles, Gmail history and so on need a cold glass of reality. I've been told they've always been doing this, so presumably they've merely become public about it recently. In either case, wake up guys!

Secondly, not being able to opt-out is also not unusual behavior from Google. While other advertising companies were issuing statements saying they'd respect the Do Not Track headers that Mozilla, Apple and even Microsoft had implemented into their browsers, Google was tellingly silent. Under increasing public pressure, they eventually released an optional extension for Chrome. If you want some fun, try opting out of DoubleClick's tracking as well. On every browser on every device you own. Individually.

I'm not entirely defending Google here, I'm just pointing out they're doing what they've always done. They're an internet advertising company.

Conclusions

As I've repeatedly said here, it's impossible to have complete privacy online, and cloud computing will only continue to grow. The key isn't to stop using the Internet, it's to use it intelligently. There's still a place for Google (indeed, any cloud company), provided you take the right precautions and weigh up the utility you derive from them with what you're giving up.

Eager to capitalise on the concerns we share regarding Google's decision to "officially" drop Do No Evil, Frank X. Shaw from Microsoft has responded with a posting on the TechNet blog. Seriously!

I had an MSDN subscription in high school

During the last week or so, there has been a fair amount of discussion about how Google is making some unpopular changes to some of its most popular products. You can see some of the concerns and worries about lack of choice and so on in these links.

I no longer link to Gawker or Murdoch publications on principle; but otherwise that was the introduction. You have my attention Mr Shaw!

When we read the coverage last week, it was clear people were honestly wrestling with the choices that had been made for them and were looking for options or alternatives.

This is definitely true. I can only speak from my elitist circle of snobby tech nerds on Twitter and newsgroups, but the number of threads and tweets concerning Google alternatives has been exploding of late. There's even evidence average folk are paying a little more attention; I've overheard several conversations in coffee shops and trains saying their "tech friends" or "smart people" have told them to look elsewhere.

But enough about my thoughts, lets wrap up Mr Shaw's comments.

The changes Google announced make it harder, not easier, for people to stay in control of their own information.

That's it in a nutshell. Mmm, nuts.

Now for our alternatives

From then on, Mr Shaw goes on about how we should be using Hotmail, Bing, Office 365 and Internet Explorer, and how Microsoft wants "to give [us] control over [our] data". A little ironic given they were once the poster child for vendor lock-in, and that Office still has sketchy support for their own ISO standards. It also doesn't help that I can't try IE because I'm not on Windows on my production machines ;).

Still, under the IE subheading Shaw points out something:

The world’s most popular browser, now with Tracking Protection, offering controls over your privacy as you browse.

Previously their "implementation" of tracking protection seemed needlessly different given the world had standardised on DNT headers, but according to Microsoft they've included this starting with IE9. I would still advice people not to use it, but nice to know those who have no choice have this feature.

And to help remind people of these alternatives, we’re placing a series of ads in some major newspapers this week.

Them fighting words. I expect there's going to be a heated debate in Google PR over this, in which case I find myself thanking Microsoft. It hasn't been the first time lately; I praised their progressive stance on same sex marriage, and gave kudus to the Windows Phone team for developing their own UI rather than just robotically copying the iPhone, if you will.

Hell is freezing over, I tell you! Well, kinda.

Regardless of where you stand on the Google+ integration into Google search results, this site is an eye opener for what it returns, and who's behind it.

Complete with an Orwellian name!

From the page:

How much better would social search be if Google surfaced results from all across the web? The results speak for themselves. We created a tool that uses Google’s own relevance measure—the ranking of their organic search results—to determine what social content should appear in the areas where Google+ results are currently hardcoded.

Now in Google's defence, they claimed on Google+ that they couldn't perform the same (or similar) thing themselves because Twitter (and presumably Facebook, etc) had closed access to their silos. Right?

All of the information in this demo comes from Google itself, and all of the ranking decisions are made by Google's own algorithms. No other services or APIs are accessed.

Ouch

Now I don't see Google+ as being a credible threat. I also still don't trust Facebook, and feel like they're playing politics here by capitalising on the stumbling of an opponent. As a service Google singled out to make an example of, you can bet the folks at Twitter also relished the opportunity to design the service.

Despite all these caveats, the results speak for themselves. Google could implement this, no question.

What's most breathtaking about this is Google did something that Facebook, Twitter and the like couldn't do: unite them. Seemingly Google didn't get the divide and conquer memo.

Not to pound a dead horse here, but I keep coming back to my theory that marketers and managers now run Google, not its otherwise talented engineers. This is clearly not a technical issue, it's a matter of PR and priorities.

So Google is integrating Google+ into Google. I suppose I should be worried about this, but I'm not!

I'm surprised that others are

When the news first broke, and the subsequent juvenile shouting match ensued, I'll admit I was more surprised that some people were surprised, rather than being surprised about the news itself. That sentence, plus my introduction claiming Google is integrating Google+ into Google borders on Inception.

To even any casual observer, it should have been obvious that Google would inform their search results with Google+ at some point. Sarcasm aside, why else would an internet advertising company launch such a service? Ditto the +1 button.

The problem for Google is more and more information is being found through people rather than algorithms, and traditionally their strength has overwhelmingly been in the latter. Facebook is arguably leading this charge (go figure), and Twitter is not too far behind. In Japan, they're ahead.

Google figures they can merge Google+ and searches together, and deliver personalised search results. They've been tailoring results to people who don't opt out of their non-DNT respecting tracking for some time now, but this just takes it to the next level.

Of course, this introduces some serious anti-trust questions, which Eric Schmidt has either dismissed or pointed to Twitter's rel="nofollow" stance; the former of which is a little disturbing and the latter is misdirection, as far as I'm concerned. Danny Sullivan and MG Siegler would seem to agree. Apparently the blinkers are firmly installed on enough people though, read Google's response on Google+ for the comments... if you dare!

Don't worry, be happy!

Bascically, there are three reasons why I'm not [so] concerned.

People are already spelling the end of other social networks because Google+ has unfair placement, like most Google products as Ben Endelman painstakingly points out. I'm a little optimistic that they'll see the error in their ways, realise what a PR mess they've created and reverse course. They've done this many times, Google Buzz's privacy fiacso probably being the most well known example.

Secondly, as to the anti-trust whatnot specifically, I'm also not too concerned. If Internet Explorer couldn't compel an overwhelming share of the English speaking world to Bing, Soapbox and the like, I doubt people will start leaving their Facebook accounts in droves just because they see some extra stuff in their Google sidebar.

Finally, it's often said the main thing protecting us from government abuses isn't oversight, but incompetence on their part. I don't think Google is incompetent, but for now the utter irrelevance of Google+ for anyone other than the Robert Scobles of the net will keep this problem at bay.